The General Union of Palestine Students celebrated the two-year anniversary of the campus's Palestinian cultural mural on Nov. 3 with a discussion of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The event at Jack Adams Hall drew roughly 180 people and featured speakers predominantly from SF State and UC San Francisco. The mural is on the northeast face of the Cesar Chavez Student Center.

"The mural makes me feel like part of my identity is recognized. It's hard to put into words," said Aymen Abdel Halim, a senior in the Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts department.

He became a member of GUPS after transferring to the University from City College of San Francisco.

Keynote speaker Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian researcher and a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, focused on the situation between Israel and the Palestinian territories in his speech.

"It's really inspiring and motivating to start a BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign at SF State," said 27-year-old Halim.

The BDS campaign was initiated in 2005 and focuses on convincing Israel, through economic pressure, to acknowledge a Palestinian state.

"It's not strictly a Palestinian issue, it's a human issue," Halim said. He is aiming to encourage a movement at SF State, such as the BDS movement at UC Berkeley, which according to him passes out literature on products supporting Palestine.

Halim would like to organize a boycott of Caterpillar machinery used at SF State.

According to Halim, this brand of tractors is also used to bulldoze Palestinian households.

"It's to get people to do what they can everyday, where they can," said Halim.

Recent conflicts between the Israelis and Palestinians have been going on in the Middle East since at least the 19th Century. One conflict focuses on land disputes between the two. The land contested includes the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. There is currently no Palestinian nation.

Barghouti compared the situation between the two countries with that of South Africa in its former apartheid state, when it was segregated by race. The connection is made due to the treatment of Palestinians in Israeli areas, where human rights violations have been alleged. In South Africa there were a series of boycotts aimed at taking down the apartheid state, including a successful disinvestment campaign, which the United States joined in 1986.

"I truly believe our South African moment has arrived," Barghouti said.

Part of his speech touched on the battle for water in the region, recently highlighted by an Amnesty International report that found Palestinians had inadequate access to water compared to Israelis.

"The whole point is to push us out of this land or slowly kill us," he said.

Rabab Abdulhadi, the second speaker of the night and an associate professor in the College of Ethnic Studies, focused part of her speech on creating a successful movement for a free Palestine. She connected the territory's spread-out population to its conflict at home.

"Some people don't speak Arabic fluently, but they know justice in their hearts," she said.

She highlighted the need for common action towards a Palestinian state, stressing the importance of Palestinians who live in the United States to influence the American political view on Israeli.

"They are using our name with our taxes," she said.

The event started with a short documentary recounting the struggle to get the mural design approved. The most difficult part of the process was the removal of a character named Handala, who represented a refugee boy with his back to the world. The documentary stated that this point was important in showing the idea of the Palestinian diaspora. However, groups against his inclusion in the mural called the figure a "terrorist." He was eventually removed.

One of the student groups opposed to the figure was Hillel, a Jewish student group that, according to their Web site, is a center for students active in the Jewish community on campus.

"The mural doesn't affect me, but it's a piece of good art," said Aaron Horn, a Jewish studies major and vice president of Hillel's student board. He did not attend the anniversary celebration, but was aware of the controversy surrounding it.

The final mural features an image of Palestinian-Arab-American activist Edward Said and a quote -- "Humanism is the only, and I would go so far as saying, the final resistance we have against inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history." It also included the word "Salam," meaning "peace" in Arabic, formed as two doves at the top of the art piece.

"The mural doesn't say 'Palestinians are great and Jews are awful,'" 21-year-old Horn said. "It symbolizes a people representing themselves."

Booths along the walls of the event also provided information from sponsors, including the Arab Cultural and Community Center and Jewish Voice for Peace.